Why is there no PVP Protection Gear?

[leberle]

Hi everyone,

before i start with the core question, i gona explain you how viable prot is for PVP. So please don't start flaming before you have read that part.

Lets take a spec from a normal PVE Tank as example:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LA0cZZcEtoIMzcest

doesn't look viable for pvp, right? Yes, it isn't too viable, but it is meant as an PVE spec, so no wonder in that. But you can already have some fun:
Removing Buffs with Shieldslam and getting high damage with the right PVE Gear (more to that later) with shieldslam. Endgame Raiding Gear will give you as normal prot specced warrior crits to somthing up to 3k. But you won't crit too often.
Debuff Armor and DPS at the same time with Devastate, but you are mostly not long enough on an enemy, especialy in Arenas.
Lower Rage costs for everything, that's great.
Higher AP trough Vitality, so also higher rage gain.
Higher survivability trough more armor, more blockvalue and less incomming spelldamage in def stance.
A 5 second stun, a realy nice thing for pvp, every mace warrior knows that.
AND: you use a shield, so you can daze targets with shieldbash and than give them a high Heroic Strike crit. And you can hit targets even when you are disarmed with shieldslam and shieldbash. And you can keep reflect on cooldown.
In that spec you have some problems in pvp: you "waste" much points into skills that are useless in pvp.

So lets change that:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LZVVzu0xRZfVts0bzdxsh
that spec still can tank, since shieldslam is a high threat attack, i tested it for some time. But since i am not interested in PVE at all, it is not so important anyways.

Lets look at the spec, and lets start in the prot tree:
Vitality: More survivability and more rage gain. Thats important since you are wielding only one weapon and need all rage you can get.
Shieldslam: Your main Attack that also gets rid of annoying things liek icebarrier or stoneshield.
Focused Rage: You need every rage point you can get.
1H Mastery: Higher Rage gain and more Shieldslam Damage.
Shield Mastery: Less incomming Damage and Higher Shieldslam Hits
Conc Blow: The stun
Imp. Shieldbash: How to set healers into panic mode? Shieldbash their heal, set them into a 3 sec silence and than make an 1.5k Heroic strike crit.
Improved Disarm: The CC of the warrior, especialy after 2.3
Improved Revenge: Anoying for every melee, including hunters. They often get stuned after they successless tried to wingclip you, so you got time to hit the crap out of them. Also realy nice against ferals. But not nice against MS Warriors, never use it there!
Last Stand: The extra tick in survivability. More to that later.
Shield Spec + Shield Block: Like i said, you need every rage point. And blocking is nice. You can block shoots of hunters, block stuns from rogues, you can block everythign that's physical damage. Wonder if you can block Blind after 2.3
Thoughness: Grants you even more melee sruvivability.
Tactical Mastery: Needed for PVP.
Imp Bloodrage: Like i said: you need every rage point!!

So till now i hope you can follow me that all those skills are viable in pvp. Not against all classes, but against many.

Now to the fury tree: Lets start at the bottom:
Cruelty: Extra crit for more damage, always nice.
Unbr. Wrath: I think you know why... Procs realy often with a 1h btw.
Piercing Howle: AOE Slow to keep hunters and Rogues near you, they tend to dodge shielbash and hamstring. Only use hamstring when you are behind them and they are affected by PH. so PH is just the "timesaver". Oh, and it also dazes, so everyone around you gets affected by higher HS hits.
Bloodcraze: in a good PVP Prot Gear with a mix of PVP Gear and Blockvalue gear, you get around 12k-13k HP UNBUFFED: If you use Commanding shout, you have around 14k HP. Thats 140 HP per Tick. But there is more: If you use your Last stand, you gain 30% more HP! That'S than somthing around 18K HP. That means you heal 182 Per tick. That's mostly more than a rogue will hit you for with whitedamage trough your high armor. It addds a lot extra survivability, even if it sounds not too much. Realy nice against ferals.
Commanding Presence: Filling point, but nice anyways for Survivability OR rage gain.
Enrage: Higher Damage
Imp. Intercept: Realy needed for PVP.
Deathwish: Fear immunity. Needed against many classes.

So you see, the Fury tree adds some more tooling AND buffs to the PVP survivability and damage of the prot tree.

But you think: "What is it good for? Icemages will still own me!"
Well yes ^^
But they most likely will be oom and have gotten some damage and used many of their cooldowns.
This spec is great against everythign physical: Rogues, Warriors, Hunters, Ferals, Melee Shamys. If you learn to have a good timing and know the cooldowns and when people use what spell, than also retri paladins are nice enemys.
Important is: If it has the possibility to use magic, but is mainly physical damage: Don't reflect everything, reflect anoying things like Cyclone, entangling roots or frostshock.
Also nice are Pom mages: you can most of the time play them oom and with good timing and a bit luck reflect high damage spells back. Ah yea, shrot explaining of reflect too:

What does reflect mean? Reflect means, that you just wasted the enemys mana, didn't get damage (to see it in other ways: when you reflect a pom pyro that than crited for 4K, it would be the same like you having 400 Stamina more, not taking ignite into account).
Things that are hard enemys: Icemages, Shadow priests and Warlocks. They just don't crit and reflected things don't do that much damage alone. And Icemages can kite you easylie.

But since PVP is also about balance, this is ok. We don't whant to be a imba all killing pewpew machine, right?

Everything said was about equaly geared enemys ofc, if someone outgears you by far, you will get owned. But that brings me to the core point:

When i pvp in such a spec, i don't get rewarded for it. There is no Gear availible that suits Protection PVP. The problem is maybe that blizzard sees that as "tanking gear", but such gear wouldn't be viable for tanking. Here an example:

Merciless Gladiator's Protector Helm
Binds when picked up
Head Plate
1385 Armor
+15 Strength
+54 Stamina
Meta Socket
Yellow Socket
Socket Bonus: +4 Strength
Durability 100 / 100
Classes: Warrior
Requires Level 70
Equip: Improves hit rating by 14.
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 31.
Equip: Increases the blockvalue of your Shield by 27.
Equip: Improves your resilience rating by 25.

Merciless Gladiator's Protector Shoulders
Binds when picked up
Shoulder Plate
1278 Armor
+9 Strength
+51 Stamina
Red Socket
Yellow Socket
Socket Bonus: +3 Strength
Durability 100 / 100
Classes: Warrior
Requires Level 70
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 27.
Equip: Increases the blockvalue of your Shield by 27.
Equip: Improves your resilience rating by 20.

Merciless Gladiator's Protector Chestpiece
Binds when picked up
Chest Plate
1704 Armor
+15 Strength
+60 Stamina
Red Socket
Red Socket
Yellow Socket
Socket Bonus: +4 Critical Strike Rating
Durability 165 / 165
Classes: Warrior
Requires Level 70
Equip: Improves hit rating by 14.
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 35.
Equip: Increases the blockvalue of your Shield by 27.
Equip: Improves your resilience rating by 24.

Merciless Gladiator's Protector Gauntlets
Binds when picked up
Hands Plate
1065 Armor
+13 Strength
+46 Stamina
Durability 55 / 55
Classes: Warrior
Requires Level 70
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 29.
Equip: Increases the blockvalue of your Shield by 27.
Equip: Improves your resilience rating by 24.
Equip: Hamstring Rage cost reduced by 3.

Merciless Gladiator's Protector Legguards
Binds when picked up
Legs Plate
1491 Armor
+27 Strength
+63 Stamina
Durability 120 / 120
Classes: Warrior
Requires Level 70
Equip: Improves hit rating by 14.
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 43.
Equip: Increases the blockvalue of your Shield by 27.
Equip: Improves your resilience rating by 22.

This would give you an edge in Shieldslam Damage, higher your survivability, give you enough AP to make some damage, it would just be perfect! And it would be in no way viable for tanking, i don't even think it would be viable for 5 mans.

Even nicer would it be, if there where +blockvalue gems, like +12 Blockvalue for a red gem slot or +6blockvalue and +6 stamina as a purple gem. So you could add some extra taste.

Many people still won't understand, how viable shieldslam is as main attack for prot warriors. So some calculations.

With the above mentioned Gear (we talk of a full S2 Gear) + the normal veteran items + gnome blocker + blockvalue neck + 2 blockvalue rings + S2 shield you would have around 700 Blockvalue, 900 with an activated gnome blocker.

Now with the above mentioned Prot PVP Spec, it would get 10% more blockvalue: 990 Blockvalue.

+ 430 basedamage
______
1420 Hit.
Sounds viable, doesn't it?
Oh no wait, we forgott somthing:
1H Spec also counts on it:
10% more damage:
1560 Damage.
And what if we are enraged?
1952 Damage.
Non crit.
Wait, it can crit?
3905 Damage.

Okok, that's before armor. So on cloth it would be around 3500 Absolutely max without external buffs and on plate somthing around 2K absolutely max. And those are even "non resilienced" values.
But for full S2 Gear with the rest also best availible gear. I also got crited for over 2k by an MS warrior while i have 14k armor, so that sounds ok to me as best gear you could get.

So now: Why isn't there such gear? It would be another viable PVP spec and maybe some people would look into it and like it. At the moment you only got the possibility to spec arms after you get some arena gear, since this spec gains the most from the rewards you get as a warrior.

Can someone maybe help me with my fight for Prot PVP gear and post that in the US Suggestion forums? I only have an EU account

Thank you if you read everything and i hope you like the idea and understand what an waste of potential it is to not make some prot gear for PVP.

Thank you
Kind Regards
Leberle

[Deleted]

Ouch walloftext.

And PvP prot spec IS ftw, particularly in BGs, a bit less in arenas. As for gear, Blizzard :/

[Stenhord]

blizzard doesnt want to add PVP items that will be superior to PVE items. The example of the set you wrote down is something i would like to see, incl the block gems. But i doubt blizzard will introduce them and they wont be superior to PVE items, because they have zero defense or any avoidance stats at all. You will have something like 5% parry, 5% dodge, 10% block, which isnt enough for pve. For a pvp tank set to be viable in pvp i think you need to have atleast 25% block and the block value you listed is too low imo. And skip the strength on the parts completely.

But ofc, pvp gear is more focused on crit, resi and stamina than the power of your attacks (block value in this case) But anyway, block value and block rating is pretty cheap stats itemization wise so should have a bit more of those.

Oh, put a Mortal Strike effect on Shield Slam together with a modified version of that set and i would love my protection warrior both in PVE and PVP.

[leberle]

You don't need 25% block, you need an overall avoidance (block/parry/dodge/miss, but miss is negated by other peoples +hit) to have 100% avoidance chance with shieldblock up, if you mean that. So with 5% parry, 5% dodge and lets say 15% block from the 3-4 blockvalue pve items you use, and you would already be fine. But 100% avoidance isn't even needed for pvp since there are no crushings and crits can be blocked.

Skipping strength would give you a far to low AP to have a nice ragegain. For myselfe i figured out an APC above 1.1k is "OK" for ragegain, but in that gear you would have around 2k which would be GREAT + you also have higher whitehits to get rid of shields and such things, where you don't gain rage. But since i am not a item specialist, there is ofc anyways more balancing needed for that.

And i think changing the skills a prot warrior has at the moment wouldn't be needed, since the dispelling of hots, shields, damage increasing effects and so on, is already enough and nearly as good as MS.

[Stenhord]

you probably missed that rage was normalized in 2.0 and AP doesnt affect how much rage you get. so you dont need more strength to get more rage. crits however always gives more rage.

you will have to low dps as prot so in a 2v2 with another dps class vs healer + dps you would probably lose or have a hard time if you dont have MS on your SL or if your friend doesnt have it or your friend is able to CC healer and dps down the dps guy of the other team. and this gets even harder and harder with better gear as you cant 2-3 shot with high resilience/stamina a full arena gear gives.

[leberle]

Yea, it got normalized, but not changed completely. The ammount you get just scales different. But it still scales with damage, only not as much as it did before the patch. More here: http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Rage_generation

In my current 2vs2 arena team (feral druid + me) teams with healers (holy paladins, restro druids, holy priests) are far easyer than teams like shadowpriest + warlock. Except Icemage + healer, but that's because we are both melee and thus have problems with icemages.

Healers just get spellocked and are dead before they can get a heal of. And since we both got a high survivability and emergency heals, we can mostly ignore dps, especialy when it is melee DPS. And even if the healer gets a hot out, it is most of the time immidiately dispelled by my shieldslam.

And ofc it gets harder the higher the ating/the gear of the enemy is, but same would go for the other team when my/our gear gets better.

[Stenhord]

well shield slam is so random maybe make it 100% chance to dispel then as im always unlucky with dispels and wont get the proc of first or second attack when i need it.

[leberle]

would be to imba in a PVE environment, since than yo uwouldn't need purge or spellsteal anymore.

[Stenhord]

you dont need dispels particulary often in PVE and you can still miss or mob/boss can dodge, parry etc. And you dont have that high hit chance in PVE as tank. So it would always be better to dispel/spell steal because shadowpriests and mages should have a higher chance to dispel, as their chance of a spell being resisted is prob atleast 10% lower than your combined miss chance together with the mobs dodge and parry.

[leberle]

get 5% hit and some +weaponskill and you don't have those problems.

I jsut whant to say: Changing skills is not needed. Prot is already fine as it is, every change would make it too strong or to weak.

[Stenhord]

I cant agree with you tho, prot isnt good enough in pvp in my opinion.

[leberle]

I cant agree with you tho, prot isnt good enough in pvp in my opinion.

How did you play it? With an Tanking spec?

[Stenhord]

had defiance and devastate, but also imp revenge, imp shield bash etc. cant imagine speccing prot and not being able to do the daily tanking jobs.

[leberle]

What do you define as "daily tanking jobs"?

[Stenhord]

you know when you tank mobs/bosses, some heal you and others dps the target.

your full pvp spec isnt rly viable for raiding (rly a nono, could perhaps OT but cant dps when OT not needed) or heroics (unless you got a pala with you for salvation) so respeccing for pvp you might just aswell spec MS.

[leberle]

you know when you tank mobs/bosses, some heal you and others dps the target.

your full pvp spec isnt rly viable for raiding (rly a nono, could perhaps OT but cant dps when OT not needed) or heroics (unless you got a pala with you for salvation) so respeccing for pvp you might just aswell spec MS.

my question was meant if your daily tanking is 5 mans, heroics or raiding, no need to try make fun of me if you don't understand the question.

That's why it is a full PVP spec, isn't it? And i tanked 5 mans and heroics already with that spec, and both verry successfull, didn't try raids since i don't have time for raids atm. And i also think it won't work there. But it also doesn't have to, since it is a PVP spec.

And see, you say: "...pvp you might just aswell spec MS."
Why not spec this spec instead of MS? It is already nearly as viable as MS, there is just no gear for it. I think i know why you don't say it: you never tried it, right?

[Stenhord]

my daily job is mainly raids then heroics secondary so. and heroics is all about composition, one heroic composition can be so different from another, i have tanked heroics in full fury/ms sometimes, but if you dont have paladin for salvation and the dpsers isnt rogue/hunter who often can lower their threat you will have trouble keeping aggro unless they are decked out in blues only.

ye, ofc a full pvp spec isnt good in pve and vice versa, but i still would like to see some improvements for prot in pvp as a whole. if i want to pvp i need to respec, while many others can still be very viable in pvp in their pve specs when i cant.

[Stenhord]

And see, you say: "...pvp you might just aswell spec MS."
Why not spec this spec instead of MS? It is already nearly as viable as MS, there is just no gear for it. I think i know why you don't say it: you never tried it, right?

i ment that if i have to respec for pvp i might aswell spec something there is gear for, if there was protection pvp gear and a few improvements (no big things rly) for prot pvp i would love be that.

EDIT: MS aswell is better than pvp-prot for grinding in my opinion, kills stuff faster and makes farming a bit less boring.

[leberle]

But this thread is not meant for improvements of protection. If you think that protection is not fine in pvp than you can try to get prot buffed for it, but here the main aim is to bring people closer that there are no rewards in pvp for prot that help them to pvp as prot.

EDIT:
and offering the gear for prot PVP would, like i said in the first post, also give warriors more choices how to play pvp.

EDIT: MS aswell is better than pvp-prot for grinding in my opinion, kills stuff faster and makes farming a bit less boring.

Depends what you farm, i can easylie kill elites with level 70+ without having problems. I don't even need cooldowns.

[Stenhord]

and offering the gear for prot PVP would, like i said in the first post, also give warriors more choices how to play pvp.

Depends what you farm, i can easylie kill elites with level 70+ without having problems. I don't even need cooldowns.

yep, i would like to see prot pvp stuff with high crit and block value, but blizzard already stated they wont introduce protection pvp items, kinda wierd as they kinda already did that for paladins with the spelldmg items which works as protgear for them. Huge aggro/dmg, no avoidance, like what we want for our prot set.

Blue post stating no protection pvp gear posted yesterday: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...=1&pageNo=3#58

Ye, i know that elites is easier as prot, can solo all the 20 honor each elites in AV and only losing about 1k hp but takes awhile. And i havent found myself farming elites ever when farming stuff i need.