Cata prot as a dps

[Shelly]

yes mastery will definatly be useless, but if prot dps really worked well in cata u can avoid getting mastery gear like how we avoid haste and u can also reforge the gear pieces with mastery

I think you missed my point.

Here we go, right now Prot is scaling almost entirely with AP and for the most part so are Arms and Fury now. They've done this change so that we scale less with our gear (especially weapons). Because of this and especially the addition of Vengance which is pretty much straight up doubling the AP of Prot the Prot spec is rather beastly, this is especially true leveling up where you'll get the most out of the additional survivability and with the increase in critter damage it should be even more important while world-questing.

So as Devlin said Prot spec in DPS gear is going like a steam-train and with shield spec it probably has some of the best rage income in the game and as we all know more resources = more damage.

However as we gain mastery Arms and Fury should be able to pull ahead of Prot as far as DPS is concerned depending on the coefficients and how well it works. Like if Arms can get up to a 50% chance of extra swing pretty quickly then that'll manage to put the damage way ahead of the extra AP Prot gets through vengeance. Same with Fury if they can buff their enrage to 25% or greater additional damage and get it up closer to 100% of the time then they should pull ahead of Prot.

So hopefully by the time we start raiding Prot in any gear type will be at a slight DPS disadvantage compared to Arms and Fury.

[gringo]

There is one thing you might have forgotten:

If Prot actually does more dps than Fury or Arms it WILL be nerfed.

Why do you think Shield Slam damage was nerfed in WotLK? PvP QQ.

Also:
- Vengeance scales off health which will mostly be on tank gear.
- Shield Slam does insane amounts of threat and you have no aggro wipe other than suicide.

Don't get me wrong, I like winning dps in random heroics, but raid dps as prot? Seriously? ...

[Abdomination]

There is one thing you might have forgotten:

If Prot actually does more dps than Fury or Arms it WILL be nerfed.

Why do you think Shield Slam damage was nerfed in WotLK? PvP QQ.

Also:
- Vengeance scales off health which will mostly be on tank gear.
- Shield Slam does insane amounts of threat and you have no aggro wipe other than suicide.

Don't get me wrong, I like winning dps in random heroics, but raid dps as prot? Seriously? ...

- if u read the the first post i wrote u'll notice that the 5k ap is based on dps gear hp
- SS does a little extra threat, but it wont b the reason to cause u to over aggro unless ofcorse ur dpsing from defensive stance
-oh and PvP wont b a big problem since vengeance will b dispellable

[Halazz]

yes mastery will definatly be useless, but if prot dps really worked well in cata u can avoid getting mastery gear like how we avoid haste and u can also reforge the gear pieces with mastery

I know for a fact that if I ever came across a Prot DPSer in a raid or in a heroic, I would kick them faster than a fat kid seeing a chocolate cake.

Prot is for Tanking, if you ain't doing that, you ain't doing your job.

[Abdomination]

I know for a fact that if I ever came across a Prot DPSer in a raid or in a heroic, I would kick them faster than a fat kid seeing a chocolate cake.

Prot is for Tanking, if you ain't doing that, you ain't doing your job.

atlast i found the quote from GC about this, this post was made because the OP was wondering about how prot might b better than arms and fury as a dps, and he also was wondering about arms and fury picking up devastate and then GC said he would b thrilled if prot could dps with a shield

The other part of the change that I suppose hasn't been data-mined is that Devastate requires a shield. We hope there is very little interest in an Arms or Fury warrior doing dps with a shield equipped, while we're thrilled if Prot warriors dps with a shield.

But, we'll see what crazy builds clever players come up with.

[Shelly]

There is one thing you might have forgotten:

If Prot actually does more dps than Fury or Arms it WILL be nerfed.

Why do you think Shield Slam damage was nerfed in WotLK? PvP QQ.

Also:
- Vengeance scales off health which will mostly be on tank gear.
- Shield Slam does insane amounts of threat and you have no aggro wipe other than suicide.

Don't get me wrong, I like winning dps in random heroics, but raid dps as prot? Seriously? ...

Shield Slam damage was nerfed because it had huge PvP burst damage, not because Prot was doing too much sustained damage. Also to attain crazy high SS hits you'd stack a lot of shield block gear which would make your character almost immune to any physical damage.

As I mentioned before while SS does do a lot of threat so does Heroic Strike, so do most all warrior abilities and warriors just need to rely on the innate threat modifiers of Battle and Berserker stance.

Also a lot of it isn't just raid dps as prot, it's raid utility as prot. All those stuns and interrupts add up quick and Prot will have 3 AoEs on rather short CDs that do a LOT of damage compared to Arms having 2 AoEs with short CDs along with 1 AoE with a long CD, and Fury only having 2 AoEs. (Prot gets Cleave, Shockwave and TC; Arms gets Cleave, Thunderclap and Bladestorm; Fury gets Cleave and a WW that's been nerfed a bit.)

All that adds up pretty quickly. Also the only difference in health between DPS and Tanking plate is going to be health by gems. This will end up adding up to a difference of thousands, but it's probably only going to be about 1/4 more health or so than DPS plate wearers, which actually ends up making DPS gear more attractive to wear on "farm" content, where if your tank can go to his highest DPS talent build rather than a high-avoidance build you can roll through things faster. Also the AP loss from vengeance by wearing slightly lower health gear should be made up by the extra strength you'll be sporting.

So really at this point it's all going to come down to the numbers towards the end of the beta and how much health everyone will really have. If Blizzard succeeds in cranking everyone's health up to astronomical levels as they have promised then Prot DPS will NOT be nerfed for PvP since we won't be able to burst folks down. If we can then it will be nerfed, we'll just have to wait and see.