Wrath of the Prots?
WotLK 6 Comments »
Many things hint that tank gear, or block value to be exact, is going to get changed - a single stat for healers and dps casters, same hit, crit and haste ratings for melee and casters as well as changes to crushing blow. Blizzard wants Warriors and Death Knights to share gear, and block value would be useless for tanking DK, so it’s very likely that block value will be removed from tanking gear, while the block value gain from strength will get increased.
Now I’m not a fan of shield block in PvP, but considering the highest damage attack prot warrior gets - shield slam - scales with block value, this means you could do pretty good shield slams in PvP gear, good thing considering Shield Slam becomes trainable. But there is more, Shield Bash dealing damage equal to 20% attack power, Concussion Blow dealing damage equal to 25% attack power and Shock Wave - cone aoe stun, also dealing 25% attack power as damage. Overall the damage a prot warrior can deal is going up greatly, but it’s still not enough to compete with other classes, a prot warrior in PvP has to look for his chances elsewhere.
The most important PvP utility one can see in new protection tree is Safeguard, looks like Blizzard is actually learning few thing from Warhammer Online - Safeguard 3/3 makes charge, intercept and intervene break roots and snares, as well as gives a 60% damage reduction for 6 seconds on a target affected by Intervene. That’s huge, it’s pretty much undispellable pain suppression on a 30 seconds cooldown.
Another thing is Shield Slam for it’s offensive dispel utility, just like the hunter’s arcane shot, what’s good about Shield Slam is that you don’t have to choose between doing damage or dispelling, you do them both. Taking down an absorb shield, bloodlust or blessing of freedom, it might not be the spec defining ability, but definitely worth to be mentioned.
I’d say that Devastate can fall into the same category, as far as it’s a PvE move, having 5 sunders stacked on a target in PvP does increase the damage done by every melee guy in the group a lot. Now with Shield Break disarming enemy shield (if the target has one) and Improved Disarm increasing target’s damage taken by 10% you can contribute to your team’s damage done without actually doing damage.
And finally, last but not least, the stuns - a single target one every 30 seconds and cone-aoe one every 45 seconds, put in extra intercept or revenge stun if specced and you can make some people cry. Prot warrior can be finally a viable alternative in PvP as a group support / CC / debuff kind of guy.
Terhix